The f(x) of f/x: ILM's finest acts of visual wizardry

This article was taken from the July issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online

Cinema’s penchant for visual wizardry goes back to black-and white classics such as The Thief of Bagdad and Metropolis. But no single f/x house has lent more reality to make-believe than George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic.

What started out as a cluster of artists cobbling together an epic space adventure has matured into a 15-time Oscar winner with 250 film credits -- the most recent being this summer’s Iron Man 2. To celebrate 35 years of ILM, Wired takes a look back at some moments that have -- ahem -- forced their way into cinematic legend.

STAR WARS (1977) TRENCH RUN INTO THE DEATH STARTo pull off the climactic finale in Star Wars, ILM commandeered its own car park. Effects artists sculpted a miniature Death Star surface out of urethane foam and cardboard, and shot it using a highspeed camera.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991) T-1000’S PASSAG E T HROUGH THE STEEL BARSTo produce this villain, ILM employed a proprietary texturing software called Make Sticky. It let them project 2D effects on to a 3D surface, creating the illusion of a liquid metal assassin oozing through steel bars.

JURASSIC PARK (1993) T.REX ATTAC KDinosaur movies used to rely on stop-motion or people in rubber suits. Here ILM artists created the first computer-generated dinos seen on film. Using a 1.5-metre tall reference model, engineers spent months developing detailed skin textures required for king-size photorealism.

AI : ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001) ROUGECITYDirectors working with CGI often have to imagine scenes in their mind’s eye. ILM helped Steven Spielberg see them on a laptop. Its previsualisation system showed him how shots looked before cameras rolled, crucial when working with CG environments such as AI’s Rouge City.

JARHEAD (2005) OILFIRESProblem: you can’t keep massive blazes going on set. Solution? The effects crew digitally pieced together a background from hours of real fire footage. Then, instead of using green screens, ILM rotoscoped soldiers and vehicles out of the studio-lot video and placed them into scenes of actual fires.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END (2007) MAELSTROMThe third Pirates film called for a huge ship engulfing whirlpool, so Photoshop cocreator John Knoll supervised one of the largest fluid dynamics simulations ever processed. Artists rendered more than 57 billion litres of water.